Monday, June 9, 2014

Time for a new Pentecost? Let it happen!

First as I forwarded an annotated version of this article to my pastor and administrator this evening, I ask you to go to the link first and read, let its wisdom take hold in good ground, and bloom in your hearts. Then I offer the letter of my thoughts about its sentiments that accompanied my memo to the pastor.

Please read the attached and I ask prayerfully consider the wisdom it . We may be on the cusp of seeing this potential great vessel of worship, the mother tongue and mother ship of the Barque of Peter cross the horizon never to return to our city. Liturgy is not about literal comprehension alone. As Fr. Friel and CS Lewis recognize that vernaculars are temporal, then would it be too much for us here to consider redressing the absence of the only timeless tongue of our Roman Rite? One Mass a week, one Mass a month? Or better yet one in each parish under the Missal of Paul VI? As Chesterton once said I now paraphrase, "Latin has not been tried (in the Ordinary Form) and failed, but has failed to be tried." The readings and homily (even the Universal Prayer) in our vernaculars can move our minds and then our wills to leave the doors after Mass and try to bring both the Word and the Great Commission to fruition. But the status quo, the Mass which is expedited by the ease of words that become formulaic and thusly subject to unconscious distraction or worse, antithetical to the deeper Word that lies with the Ritual, the real locus of worship and mystery, will cripple ritual worship's very viability and future in my estimation. There, I've said my words about my intuition and inclination. If it's not in the cards, then "amen, so be it." Blessings, C.

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